NOVEL | 1977 | 220 pages

Andres Caicedo's novel ¡Que viva la música! is a wild celebration of youth, hedonism and the transforming power of music. Maria del Carmen Huerta lives a respectable middle-class life in Colombia. One day she misses class, and discovers she cannot return to her ordinary existence but must pursue her passion for dancing across the city. We follow her from rumbas in car parks to concerts in shantytowns as she gives in to every desire - however dark. Published in 1977, Liveforever was its young author's masterpiece - and final work. Andres Caicedo took his life the day it was published, but it has been recognized as a landmark in Colombian literature ever since.

— Juan Gabriel Vásquez, author of The Informants and The Sound of Things Falling

I had always been fascinated by the fact that Latin America didn’t have an author equivalent to the European and North American urban authors, the closest being Vargas Llosa or Puig... I always felt that someone like Caicedo was missing, until I realized that it wasn’t that he didn’t exist he was just hidden, dead.

— Alberto Fuguet

Andrés Caicedo speaks the language of youth. His stories take place on any neighborhood corner of any city. He speaks of the conflicts that touch them. He puts them face to face with their immediate reality, ultimately bringing literature closer to their lives.

— Pilar Quintana

This novel is the manuscript of Maria del Carmen Huerta’s memoir. She is a bourgeois teen, a member of Cali’s lost youth. Her monologue, written in the vertiginous rhythm of an overflowing waterfall, is comical, sad and delirious. An it has a 103 degree fever.

— Jaime Manrique, author of Cervantes Street

Just like Andres’s writing, la Mona is both anchored in her cultural surroundings and willing to reach for a universal appeal. She’s both shy and daring, a girl who is starting out in life but is also being burnt by it, a girl like so many around the world.